


Lockdown

by Kay (sincere)



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Drinking, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Late Night Conversations, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-16
Updated: 2013-02-16
Packaged: 2017-11-29 12:11:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/686813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sincere/pseuds/Kay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natalie Rushman was designed to be a lot of things, and most of those things were designed to catch the interest of her surveillance target; but she can be anything Natasha needs her to be, or even just wants her to be. That's the good part about working for SHIELD. The bad part... the bad part is that some of the things she wants will hurt the very people she wants to come out of this intact.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lockdown

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Femslash February, and for a 100_Women prompt table, "success". I promise my next submission will not be melancholy! I needed to get into a groove of writing MCU femslash.

They stayed late at the office to work on the chaos that had resulted from Tony's extremely public misdeeds. Natasha could see that it was stressing Pepper out; the other woman kept rubbing her temples -- both at the same time, two fingers to each one -- without lifting her eyes from the newspaper clippings and letters. Natasha had long ago pried her from a computer with the claim that she was straining her eyes, but her rapt focus did not waver, even with the material in paper. It was long ago dark outside, and Natasha was hungry, but Pepper didn't even seem to notice, although Natasha couldn't say if it was because she didn't feel it or because she had trained herself to ignore it when she was working.

But that was what her assistant was for. "Chinese?" Natasha asked her smoothly.

Pepper glanced up, for a moment confused, as if she didn't understand the question, but the expression quickly eased into a grateful smile. "Sushi," she suggested instead. "Yellowtail, AAC, and a dragon roll." Her attention dropped back down to the papers. "And a miso soup, please. And sake. At least two bottles of sake. If they won't deliver it... We have some in the executive kitchen downstairs."

Natasha pushed herself up from the table, collecting her phone and taking quick steps to the hallway to make the quiet call. A dragon roll; indulgent and appropriate. Pepper was as fierce as civilians got -- aggressive, confident, unflinching, righteous, and her numerous victories were won all without ever raising a hand or touching a weapon.

It was something Natasha admired, even as she made her own living slinking in the grass, taking down the truly evil with their own methods, so that they would never lay their hands on the truly good.

She kind of liked being on the side of the good guys.

When the sushi arrived a while later, the containers were opened and the food split and they continued working.

"We're going to have to deal with the Fox situation sooner or later," Natasha said.

Pepper sighed. "I know, I know. But not right now. Not -- tonight, maybe. You know how they are with their company-wide memos and their on-message platforming and if the whole network's line is 'Stark Industries is in a tailspin and Tony Stark shouldn't be trusted with anything more dangerous than crayons', that's all they're going to talk about 24/7. I can't deal with that kind of... _wall_ of opposition tonight. I'll call Murdoch's people tomorrow. Tonight I just want to deal with my plate full of lawsuits and the US Army selling our stolen property."

Natasha deadpanned, "Seems like it would be easier to just hire someone to steal nuclear codes and get them all talking about something else."

Pepper chuckled, and leaned back in her chair slightly, bringing her miso soup with her to sip like a beverage. "You underestimate the attention span of the media... They'll be sure to point out that if Iron Man were on watch like he's supposed to be, the nuclear situation would be over by sundown."

Even when she was trying to talk around him, it was inevitable that the discussion turn back to Tony Stark. Natasha was not paid to be ignorant of her surroundings, and the tension between Pepper and Tony was obvious even to a casual observer. They had a strange push-and-pull, a completeness, and Natasha respected Pepper enough to be annoyed that they were trapped in a grade school game of coy avoidance. But from her analysis of Tony Stark, he was very much a grown man trapped by a grade-schooler's needs.

"Then in that case," Natasha said smoothly, "let's focus on the military issue. We have to file an injunction on their R&D."

Another two hours of work and it was unthinkably late, all the sake was gone, and Natasha was beginning to see a very clear road to recovery from the PR and legal disaster Stark Industries had ended up in last night. Pepper handled the obstacles with grace and quick thinking, and she was slowly maneuvering them back onto the path that they'd crashed from dramatically, or perhaps a better one.

"I love sushi," Pepper said, mournfully. "But it always disappears so fast, and I wish there were more of it..." She surveyed the containers. "Not like pizza, where you can eat it, and then keep eating it for the whole night, and the next day..."

Natasha's lips quirked up. "I'll make you sushi sometime," she promised. "If we weren't so busy, I could have gone out and done it tonight."

"Oh yeah?" Pepper looked curious, and then grinned. "I don't know why I'm surprised. You did -- spend some time in Japan, I guess," she glossed uncomfortably over the modeling career that had been put into the Natalie Rushman character history to appeal to Stark, "and not everyone is as incompetent in the kitchen as I am."

"Not much of a chef?"

"No, I don't really have time for... cooking." The other woman flipped a hand, vaguely, as if trying to banish the specter of cooking without looking directly at it. "I pay people to bring me food that is already cooked. That's someone else's job. I try to focus on mine."

"Well, I can't blame you for that. You don't really get to do much for your own pleasure when your job takes up so much of your life." Natasha smiled at her, briefly. She couldn't help adding, "You're wasted on Tony Stark, you know." It frustrated her.

Pepper paused, the last of the sake halfway to her mouth, and then lowered it again, with a little self-deprecating smile. "Well," she said. "Now that I'm CEO, we're supposed to pretend that I don't have to be wasted on him anymore."

_Pretend._ Natasha cleared her throat. "You _don't_ have to be."

"It's not that easy."

Natasha ignored her. "It's all about you, Ms. Potts. Are you happy with what you are when you're around him? Or do you feel like you become... limited, by what he makes you?"

Pepper was watching her, green eyes shuttered and measuring and slightly fogged with too much alcohol and too little sushi to soak it up. Natasha was aware that she had stepped over a line, that this no longer sounded like the supportive observations of an admiring assistant, and she took a sip to combat irritation at herself.

But she couldn't help it. It was a pet peeve, she knew, a personal crusade; she could not stand by and watch women let men define them. When it was a woman of Pepper's intelligence and dedication, it was all the more insulting.

Pepper cleared her throat, and set her cup down again. "I wanted to apologize," she said. They would both pretend Natasha hadn't said anything. "I yelled at you, at Tony's party. I was -- mostly stressed out, I think, and scared. I wanted someone to blame for a downward spiral I knew perfectly well was Tony's own doing, and I decided to blame you."

"You don't need to apologize. It -- is partially my fault." Natasha pursed her lips, and swept some of her cascade of curls behind one ear, keeping her gaze carefully lowered. "I saw what he was doing, and I knew it was bad news. But I..."

_I studied him instead of stopping him, because that's my assignment. I let him show me how to use the Iron Man suit, and what it could do, and what the guy currently inside it might do the moment he knew his life was on the line._

She said, finally, "I got a little caught up in the excitement. I should have known better. But what I regret most about it..." Her eyes met Pepper's, steady. "...is the trouble that slip caused for you."

There was a long beat, with Pepper's brow furrowed and eyes searching her face, and then Pepper looked away. "That's generous of you to say, when I screamed at you for it." She lifted her cup again and finished it in one swallow.

"You were under quite a bit of stress at the time," Natasha said wryly, and got to her feet briskly. "I decided not to hold it against you." Pepper was looking a little sallow, so maybe it was time to break out the water pitcher on the hutch across from where they were wrapping up. She crossed the room to pour them each one of the small, clear cups there.

She heard Pepper coming up behind her, but she pretended not to, keeping her honed senses as under wraps as ever; but when she turned around Pepper did not reach for the cup in her hand, but for her face, stepping in close all at once to kiss her.

Natasha held still, sparks going off under her skin and in her mind, each flare filled with a thousand infinitesimal details -- the way that her stilettos were cancelled out by Pepper's and Pepper still loomed over her, the way the other woman's strawberry-blond hair shifted and caught the light and smelled of some sensible minty shampoo, the way that she tasted like alcohol and the extremely faint flavor of her lipstick, mostly worn off by this time of day and after eating and drinking all night.

She thought about kissing her back -- imagined it, how good it would feel, how much they would both like it; how Pepper would feel, thin and chilled and real against her warmer body -- and thought about how it would end, maybe tangled on this floor, maybe on the nearest sofa, or maybe they would make it all the way back to an apartment, with a proper bed, and do it right.

She would have liked that.

_Natasha_ would have liked that. Natasha, who was not who Pepper was kissing.

And even though she had seduced a thousand people this way, even though she had cheerfully indulged in a thousand one-night stands that were not truly seductions so much as simply having a fun time relieving stress and feeling good, Natasha didn't like the idea of being another trial for Pepper to overcome.

Natasha straightened up, pulling away, and for a long moment they stared at each other, breathing slightly quickened. Natasha saw Pepper's dilated pupils and measured her level of intoxication.

"Oh my god," Pepper said, numbly. "I thought-- But you didn't--"

Which forced Natasha to say, as composed as she could muster, "As nice as that was, Ms. Potts..."

"You called me Ms. _Potts_ ," Pepper echoed, her voice going up a notch. "Oh my god. I'm your boss. I kissed an employee. Oh my god -- I'm _Tony!_ " It was almost a squeak.

"Don't start drafting your letter to Penthouse just yet," Natasha told her, wry. "But I think... you're probably a little drunk, and maybe now isn't the best time to do something you might regret later." She gently steered Pepper around, guiding her back to the chairs.

She very briskly got back to business, although Pepper seemed somewhat lost and dismayed, preoccupied; Natasha pretended that nothing had happened, until Pepper was swept along in the wake of her professionalism, nodding and listening and turning pages. But the flattened look in Pepper's eyes did not quite fade away, and the natural interaction of earlier did not quite return.

She couldn't help feeling like she had hurt Pepper with her rejection, and she consoled herself with the hurt that she had saved Pepper from, by not sleeping with her at a time when Pepper not only didn't know what she wanted, but didn't even know who she was sleeping with. In a week or two, this assignment would be over one way or the other, and Natasha would be on to other things, and Stark couldn't keep a secret for the duration of a two-minute press conference, so... Natasha's real identity _would_ get out. And Pepper would be hurt to have a friend lie to her.

But not as much as to have shared a genuine, intimate moment with a spy and a con artist.

Pepper was a civilian, and civilians had feelings, real and beautiful and delicate, like artisan glass.

"Thank you -- Ms. Rushman," Pepper said, with a smile that was too brittle to be real. "You've been a big help. And -- I think you were probably right, about earlier." She shouldered her bag and started to leave, not so intoxicated that she couldn't maneuver the building with effortless grace on her heels, but somewhat complicated by the very brisk walk she maintained as she fled.

Natasha was not a civilian, and she was well-rehearsed on how to shut away her feelings, putting them gently behind closed cabinet doors in her mind and locking the vault entrances where such precious things were kept, without ever looking to ask herself, _What is it I want?_


End file.
